During September teal season in South Louisiana, putting a dog in deep enough water where a big gator might feel secure is taking a bad risk. But when water temps reach the low 60's, the cold blooded gators' metabolism slows beyond hunger, and losing a dog would take more of a fluke, like the dog startling one sunning or some such. Consequently, I hunt mine without much concern in the cooler big duck season but chauffeur him in deep water during the teal season:

About 15 years ago I was teal hunting the Wax Lake Outlet at the mouth of the Atchafalaya in South Louisiana. We had left our dogs at home because of the gators. The Wax is a distributary where you can walk on hard bottom in shin deep water but there are trennasses (channels) where the water can be quite deep. You don't want to put a dog across a trennasse when it's warm out.

There was a group of guys launching right after us who had a big yellow male running around. I mentioned to them they might want to forgo the dog, but they waved me off.

Turns out they decided to hunt a few hundred yards away from us. We had gotten our limit and were just heading out when we heard screaming, a dog yelping and shotguns going off. Turns out the dog was swimming back across a trennasse and a big gator decided to take an exploratory bite. We motored over to see if we could help.

The dog was in pretty bad shape with two broken rear legs and multiple puncture wounds, but they somehow had managed to scare off the gator. I administered what first aid I could and stabilized the legs with pieces of willow branches and a fishing rod. The dog wasn't bleeding to badly externally, but you could tell shock was setting in. They left everything out and rushed back to the launch to get the dog to a vet and we agreed to pick up their dekes and leave them at the launch guy's hut. No idea if the dog made it or not, but he was pretty torn up. Probably not.

You just have to be careful down here when it's warm. Gators and moccasins are a fact of life, but I worry a lot more about my dog stepping on a big moccasin than I do a gator taking him.

I worry far more about careless 4-wheelers clipping a dog on a hunt than gators or snakes. Spend a lot of time teaching my young dogs to give moving bikes wide berth, but there's no accounting for some operators' lack of attention - or judgement...